The present invention relates to a door handle device for vehicles.
There has conventionally been provided a door handle device for vehicles which device is so designed that door opening operation is performed by operating a handle member provided on the vehicle outside of a door panel of the vehicle. This type of door handle device commonly has a handle base to which the handle member is rotatably mounted and fixed, the handle base being fixed to the door panel of the vehicle by screwing.
As to the structure for assembling the handle base to the door panel, as shown in FIG. 6, a screw locking member 102 to which a screw can be screwed is provided on a rear side (upper side in FIG. 6) of a through hole 101 formed in a handle base 100, and a door panel 5 is sandwiched between the handle base 100 and the screw locking member 102, where the handle base 100 is fixed to the door panel 5 by tightening the screw 103. As an assembling procedure for this structure, before the handle base 100 is assembled to the door panel 5, the screw locking member 102 is, first, temporarily fixed loosely to the handle base 100 with the screw 103 preliminarily, forming one handle base assembly 110. Then, in the assembly line of vehicles, after the screw locking member 102 is inserted into a hole 5a formed in the door panel 5, the handle base 100 is moved leftward as viewed in FIG. 6 so that the screw locking member 102 is engaged with an edge of a fixing groove 5b communicating with the hole 5a, and finally the screw 103 is completely tightened so that the handle base 100 is fixed to the door panel 5. With this structure and assembling procedure, in manufacturing lines for vehicles in which assembling work has to be done within limited time, the step of setting the screw locking member 102 and the screw 103 to the through hole 101 can be omitted, making it possible to achieve the assembly of the door handle device promptly and simply.
However, even when the screw locking member is preparatorily temporarily fixed to the handle base to assemble the handle base assembly as described above, there is a possibility that the screw locking member and the screw may fall off during the work, in which case the assembling work for the handle base assembly would take time in turn.
Also, the worker is necessarily required to pick up screws one by one in the screwing process and tighten the screw while keeping the screw aligned with the screw hole, causing the work to be troublesome.